EU foreign policy in the 1990s: The capabilities-expectations gap and civilian power

The article reviews and discusses three recent edited books on the EU as a foreign policy actor: Foreign Policy of the European Union (Regelsberger et al., eds., 1997), A Common Foreign Policy for Europe? (Peterson gr Sjursen , eds., 1998) and Paradoxes of European Foreign Policy (Zielonka, ed., 1998 ). The article focuses on four central issues which are dealt with in the t hree books: the capabilities-expectations gap, the nature of the EU as a fo reign policy actor, EU governance in the field of foreign policy, and the u nderstanding of the present development, including the question of continui ty or change from EPC to CFSP and the importance of the Amsterdam Treaty. T he article concludes that the three books, each with its different scope, a re important contributions to understanding the EU as a foreign policy acto r in the 1990s. Ideally the books could, to a larger extent, have taken up the issue of a possible intersubjective EU framework of meaning, and the im portance of EU foreign policy for the shaping of interests in national fore ign policies.